Buying lots of identical pairs of socks massively reduces the amount of time you need to find matching pairs after drying them.
I scrape CVV number of my credit card and save it on my smartphone because if I lost my credit card nobody will be able to shop on line
Drink water instead of soda, alcohol, other sugary drinks. Eventually you’ll find yourself to be an expert water connoisseur and prefer water over pretty much all beverages.
I love water so much I always add a splash to my whisky!
in the uk old timers would order “whiskey and threat” - like just threaten it with water
Sometimes I indulge in a coke but I usually prefer tap water now.
Same. Often finish the can with a feeling of disappointment and thirst.
Not like that for me. But there is a certain lack of satisfaction if I had to define it.
Or Tea with little/no sweetening (my personal favorite is hibiscus with a little lemon in there).
Sometimes I indulge in tea with a bit of honey for the occasional caffeine fix.
Almost all bottled water is loaded with microplastics. Ideally, drink water from a filtered tap.
It’s okay, there storednin my balls for later
Along with all of my pee
I have a water filter at home. I never use bottled water. Almost every public space also has clean and safe water so if you bring a reusable water bottle with you, you’ll have free water everywhere.
Filters are usually made out of plastic :)
There’s a difference between high quality plastic performing filtration while it’s cold plastic and cold water vs crap plastic that’s regularly exposed to high temperatures during transport and storage with the same water contained the entire time.
Maybe, I’m no expert. But, I’ve seen a test showing a consumer water filter increasing microplastics by 1000%. Could just be only that specific filter or filter type. I believe it was a Zero filter, which I think uses resin beads for ion exchange.
Interesting, I used ZeroWater for a while … and know others that do. But yeah, searching around it seems it’s only ConsumerLabs.com that came up with that result and all other filters were removing (at least some percentage of) microplastics.
I’m not sure how much I trust that ConsumerLabs.com test: https://www.consumerlab.com/methods/water-filters-review/water-filters/
Repeatability isn’t really established by testing one device, one time. I’m not an expert either, but that result seems quite surprising.
I have a reverse osmosis system now personally…
Nah, I’m all about the kombucha now.
Edit: fuck, y’all really hate probiotics
You can just pinch the end of a banana to start peeling it. The effort required is far less than trying to overcome the ripping force of the stem.
My partner hates when I open bananas like this because there’s a little dark part of the banana under that end of the peel that she calls “The Ban-anus” and thinks it’s gross even if I pick off that part and don’t eat it.
Monkeys peel bananas also like this.
Exactly. The professionals showed us the way.
Bananas are the way they are through millenia of selective breeding, so there’s no reason to think that monkeys know anything we don’t. If pinching the bottom is easier than bending the stem, your banana isn’t ripe yet and doesn’t want to be eaten until later.
A) that seems backwards: an under ripe banana will be stiff inside so you can snap the peel around the stem when you bend it, while a riper, softer banana will mush inside when you bend the stem. And,
B) like I give a fuck what a banana wants
A) The peel becomes easier to tear faster than the inside gets softer. You don’t need to snap it, it doesn’t need nearly enough tension to count as a snap once it’s ripe.
B) The banana’s been selectively bred to want to be as delicious as possible. It only wants you to be happy.
I’d like to apologize for my remarks regarding banana
Have you ever tried opening a banana from the bottom like described in the comment?
Yes. Every time, it’s gone less well than opening a banana from the stem end, unless the banana was horrendously underripe. I’ve never had the problem the alternative approach is claiming to fix unless I’ve intentionally opened the banana badly on purpose to prove a point about the problem really being people opening from the stem end incompetently.
While I can concede your point that it’s feasible and possibly even more practical to open from the stem, I gotta say that since switching to the other end years ago(because I saw a similar thread on reddit), it’s been super easy and I’ve had zero issues. The stem just has a higher rate of fucking up, but it’s not like either end will fully decimate the banana. Peeling properly after it’s opened is an easy fix either way.
I love how it skillfully peels the banana and then eats the peel anyway. Amazing.
But not the stem!
I don’t get the banana trick. What do I do after pinching? I just end up ripping through the skin of one while trying it out.
That’s way too slow.
Take one end in each hand, hold it “like a frown” in front of you.
Bend it in half downward and bite the peak of the bend with one of your canines.
when it snaps open, shove one half of the banana into your mouth, (chew if needed, then) swallow.
Shovel the other half into your mount, (chew if needed, then) swallow.I was today-years-old when I learned the ideal way to eat a banana.
And that’s only the oral method.
Fuck you, I’ll keep peeling the banana stem-first!
This also prevents those weird banana strings from forming!
I just use my fingernail to make a small cut at the stem end and then it’s super easy to peel that back
People peel from the stem? What?!
And then you have a handle to hold it by when you get to the end (beginning?)!
Why even peel at all? https://youtu.be/L1QVp55ehvs?si=W1vfyguSovNK7SmG
Just reposting without the tracker: https://youtu.be/L1QVp55ehvs
To stop infinite scroll on social media, quickly scroll 2-3 screen lengths down without looking at the posts. Now read the posts scrolling up. Eventually you’ll reach where you started and most probably the laziness to go all the way back will prompt you to exit the app.
That’s amazing!
Now give me a tip to prevent myself from opening the same app immediately after hahaha
I changed the icon location, and my muscle memory still was trying to open them from the previous location, basically in a complete auto-pilot mode. That led me to a realization of how fucked up the situation was, and eventually helped me uninstall/reduce screen time of those apps.
Instead of closing an app, shutdown the phone. Now it’s a pain to reopen the app.
With how fast phones start up nowadays, that’s hardly a pain
New tip: Install bloatware to make it slower
For some reason I always have a habit of scroll to the bottom of any list and reading up. Like I wanna confirm how long the list is before working my way up
Put $20-50 behind your phone in the phone case.
If you ever forget / lose your wallet, you’ll have a little cash.
Start reading the nutritional facts on food packages. In the beginning it will make little sense. But as time goes by, you start understanding it a bit more and to notice patterns.
Eventually you start doing wiser choices. I’ve learned pretty quickly that the “healthy options” (e.g. low sugar cookies) are as bad for you than the regular ones.
Be sure to look at what they consider a serving size is when you do this. I’ve seen cases where you have something that is packaged as a single serving, but the nutritional facts say the serving size is half of that. I think this is just criminal. Like anyone would eat only half an instant ramen or whatever.
In the USA, this was supposed to be fixed in 2016 when the new nutrition facts label was introduced (the redesign that increased the font size of the calories).
By law, serving sizes must be based on the amount of food people typically consume, rather than how much they should consume.
https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-facts-label/serving-size-nutrition-facts-label
Of course, there’s still companies that skirt the rules.
Or just always look at the 100g column.
Started really paying attention when my health imploded some years back. Would add that food content literacy tends to drive me to the outer edges of the grocery, and out of the middle where there’s more junky, processed crap.
One time I was in Mexico with my wife while our daughter was still a baby and the lady at the front desk of the hotel where we were staying offered us a crib we could borrow. It was a kind gesture, but I was a little concerned because the crib seemed wobbly. I realized there were some screws loose but though I had a multitool on me, the holes were stripped.
So later, I was talking with a local and he’s like “I can fix that.” He comes over and pulls a pack of toothpicks out of his pocket. He sticks one into each hole and breaks it off so that it’s not sticking out anymore. Then he drives the screw back in. I shook the crib after that and it was rock solid!
Now I always keep some toothpicks handy. Fast-forward to just this year. My daughter is now an adult living in a condo, and was complaining the screw popped out of a kitchen cabinet door when her roommate yanked on it too hard. “I can fix that.”
Wood glue and/or toothpicks are probably stronger than the particle board most furniture is made of nowadays, it’s repairing and strengthening.
Another adjacent life hack is when assembling flat pack furniture, use a quality wood glue on all the joints and connectors, but especially those little wood dowels. It won’t make it indestructible, but it’ll hold up far better over time.
You can do something similar with damaged metal threads, instead of toothpicks using copper wire strands. Project Farm has a video on the technique comparing it to other fixes: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jknMrFOGMOQ
It works a bit better if you put a little bit of wood glue on the tip of each toothpick before driving it into the hole. Definitely a great trick!
I still don’t understand how this works. Maybe a video or image would help. How would he drive the screw in to the toothpicks if it was stripped?
Well the toothpick shifts to one side as you put the screw in.
The problem with a stripped hole is that the hole is now as wide as the screw, so the screw has nothing to grip anymore. Conventional wisdom in this case is that you should get a wider screw and try again, but that’s not always something you have on hand, especially when travelling.
But the toothpick hack takes it the other way. It’s effectively narrowing the hole again by taking up space in it, and now your same screw can work again.
The hole is stripped not the screw head. The toothpicks give the screw something to grip.
Ohh ok that makes much more sense
I’m so glad you posted this - my integrated fridge door has dropped slightly after being taken off and put back on when installed. Can’t really screw back into mdf/chipboard/whatever and I’ve been stressing about getting it fixed for months because whilst it’ll get worse over time, it technically works and no doubt the fitter would say I need to take the whole thing out and replace the side panel.
Thank you!
Sometimes fridge doors sag because the bushings on the hinges break or deteriorate. I’ve fixed them before by adding washers in place of the bushings, or cutting a new bushing out of a hard plastic cutting board.
Wrestle the pig first, every day. Whatever is your worst, most unpleasant, annoying task for the entire day, do it before you do anything else. It minimizes your stress and worrying and puts it in the rearview mirror.
For a second I thought you were talking about masturbation.
Well yeah crank your hog first of course
SPEAK UP BROTHER, I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY CRANKED HOG
AROOOOOO
ABSOLUTELYCRANKINMYMF’INHOG
Spank the monkey
Filbert and Heffer playing “Spank the Monkey”
Oh bay bee, oh bay bee, oh bay bee.
Rocko?
Mrs. Bighead?
simultaneous phone slam
Alternatively, if you’re neurodivergent you may have a better time doing the easiest tasks first to build momentum and motivation.
Yeah, everyone’s neurochemistry is different and should be experimented with.
I didn’t know this for so long, that I needed a few easy wins to set the pace, that I feel like I could have been way more productive throughout my 20s haha
I feel like saying “I have to do this before anything else” might very well end with me doing nothing
Ok, I wrestled a cop and pinned him. What’s step 2? Please respond before his backup arrives.
I think you’re supposed to tickle his balls now.
I have some paperwork to do that will likely result in $2000. It’s been over a year and i cannot just sit down and do it. I stress over it every day but continue to put it off.
Today. Let’s both finish our paperwork today. The sense of freedom and achievement will be good.
Ok. I have a 2 hour car ride this afternoon. I will get everything ready this morning and do it in the car. Thanks! Good luck!
Excellent. I hope you did OK. I got mine done! It wasn’t as bad as I thought. If you haven’t finished yet, don’t give up, pick up the pieces and carry on. Thanks for being my Internet buddy on this.
Congratulations! I didn’t finish, but did get a good start on it. Thanks for the encouragement!
Well done. Starting is the hardest part. Are you going to do a bit more today?
I’m on vacation until Wednesday so I will finish it on my flight home. Getting started really was the hardest part. Now it’s just putting numbers into boxes and adding them up. By gathering info and starting on it, i find that the expected $2k gain is closer to $10k. That’s some great motivation to get it done!
My former mentor said: 80% of the deliverable is the 20% of the scope you really don’t want to do
Human memory is bias towards most recent things in a group set. If your set is a “workout” or a “workday”, doing the fun stuff last will affect positively all the memory items in the same group set. This works even if you know that your memory is doing this.
We don’t live in a “present now”. We live in a mental image constructed from memory of recent past.
Trick is not to do unpleasant stuff first, but to do pleasant stuff last.
I don’t think “waking up early” counts, but it’s definitely the most unpleasant and annoying task of my weekdays, followed closely by actually getting to work.
But where will I find a pig?
They’re easy to spot. They’re typically wearing cute little uniforms & driving fun little cars with lights on top.
Best advice ever.
Using a rubber band around the lid of a jar to open it effortlessly.
Set up automatic bank transfers to chop your income into % parts: 5% play money, 20% savings, bills etc. do what works for you. Get rid of unnecessary subscriptions.
Privacy.com is your friend. Free and makes ‘uncancellable’ subscriptions a thing of the past
So many people need this.
I don’t have enough to chop my money into anything other than 75% rent, 20% car payment, 5% food for my dog.
But I do put that rent and car payment in a savings account and pay from that. Those fractions of a penny per month add up; after 5 years I have 77 cents in my savings account!
20% to a car payment is stupid
And necessary in many situations.
It’s more expensive to move somewhere a car isn’t necessary.
deleted by creator
Have you seen the prices of used cars lately?
deleted by creator
Dude you could have just answered “no, I haven’t seen the prices of used cars lately.”
Yes, the used car market is full of predators charging 200% more than what a junker is worth because there’s nothing stopping them. And I also agree that keeping the minimum wage literal decades behind productivity breeds an environment where people are assigned a made up number that tells banks it’s ok to gouge this person on interest rates. Full agreement with you there.
Hey, it’s your brother. Can I borrow 76 cents?
Sure, since we’re under capitalism I’ll have to check your imaginary number and then require a minimum monthly payment of 11 cents for the next 4 years.
Switching off your phone. It changes everything.
If you have a toilet that, when flushed, turns your shower into lava, adjust the toilet filler valve so it’s barely open and you’ll have much less of a problem.
Also, if the water coming out of your faucet is hot enough to harm you, turn down the temperature of your water heater. You will save quite a bit of money too.
Edit: and check the anode in your water heater every 5-ish years. So much cheaper and easier to replace that than the entire tank. Pay attention to your water heater.
Just commenting to say you cannot simply lower the water temperature. If you go too low there is a risk of legionella and nobody wants that. So please, before you lower your water temperature, do some research.
I believe 60 degrees is basically the lowest you can go safely. Different sources seem to indicate that.
What about on demand heaters?
Absolutely correct. However, I’ve lived in apartments where I couldn’t control the water heater temperature and other people might be in the same situation who might benefit.
Look at what you’re doing and using spacial reasoning.
So many days, I think I was the only person at my work who played with 3d puzzles or Legos growing up.
I didn’t realise how much other people didn’t do this until i looked at a corner for five minutes, then came back having built a basic speaker stand that fitted perfectly and the husband lost his goddamn mind
(I mean basic, i just cut a base down and mounted a pole on it)
What do you mean by fitted perfectly? Like it had a right angle to fit in the corner or something more than that?
yeah. Like I said, it was seriously basic
I’ve always tried to do this and conceptualized it as “square up to your work”. I would love to teach my sons this. I was just finding myself at weird angles trying to do something or having the tools or items I was using scattered. It helps so much to get your space organized!
Sometimes I’m kinda dumb about this, but dear God I agree.
We use these things call E Track Straps at work for years. They only really work right in one position, but for some reason, I’m the only one who can put them in the right position. I don’t think anyone’s even managed it by accident.
But yeah, growing up, legos, block toys, kinetics, things like that. When I got into video games, I always preferred the FPS games. Things like Quake or Halo needed you to understand the map layout and plan around the physics of the players and weapons.
- Safety razors - I’ve got thick growth and I was spending more and more on expensive multi-blade razors trying to find a decent shave without the blade going dull after 3 uses. The answer was to have less, better quality blades rather than the expensive trash in the market. A safety razor multipack costs a pittance and has lasted me over a year. Each blade is 2 sided and can be flipped. And when you’re done with it, it can be recycled with no plastic waste. There’s literally no down side if you wet shave.
- Electric screwdriver - it doesn’t matter how much DIY you do or how rarely you make IKEA furniture, you still need an electric screwdriver.
- Brain hacks - your brain and body are predictable physical objects that are programmed a certain way. If you take the time to learn how they work, you can use that to your advantage. e.g. If you know that procrastination isn’t a time management problem, but rather an emotional regulation problem about the task that’s due; then you can start addressing the cause. Or if you want to build a new habit, you can combine it with something you like, to make you look forward to it (e.g. pick a TV show you really want to watch and only allow yourself to watch it while you’re on the treadmill). Or realise that discipline and motivation are finite resources in the day. There’s too much info to cover here, but I learn about these things from podacsts mostly:
https://www.drlauriesantos.com/happiness-lab-podcast
https://www.schwab.com/learn/choiceology
https://youarenotsosmart.com/podcast/
- “Good enough” tech - You will save a lot of money if you define your use case for tech and then buy a product that is good enough to do the job (and preferably secondhand). I’m currently writing this out on a laptop I bought last week for £150 from eBay, brand new condition Dell, Intel 8th gen i7, 16GB RAM and half TB NVME drive. My gym TV is a £30 IPS Dell monitor with a Fire TV stick.
- Facebook Marketplace - make a dummy account for a facebook marketplace. I have bought tons of “like new” things in brand new condition (e.g. a whole home weights gym setup) for a fraction of brand new price. Also if there’s anything I want to get rid of, then I just post it for sale. I have had a completely worn out, cosmetically destroyed desk that I posted online for £1. Someone came and collected it the same day. It saved me a trip to the junkyard by having someone come collect it and saved the waste by going to someone who will use it. 2nd pro tip: never post anything for free. Scumbag entitled people monitor facebook for free deals and you will have a bad time. Post things for £1 and you’ll get serious people who will be grateful.
- Accept what you can’t change - your life will be much better if you stop spending energy pushing against things you can’t influence. Traffic cop walking away after giving you a ticket? Accept the hit and walk away. You took a risk not paying for parking, it didn’t work out. Go home and tell your spouse about it; then move on with your life.
